The Ukrainian Herald (1970–1972, 1987–1989)

The Ukrainian Herald

Cover of the compiled first and second editions of The Ukrainian Herald
Publisher	None (samvydav)
Editor-in-chief	Viacheslav Chornovil
Editor	1970–1972: Yaroslav Kendzior Mykhailo Kosiv 1987–1989: Ivan Gel Mykhailo Horyn Pavlo Skochok
Founded	January 1970
Political alignment	Dissident
Language	Ukrainian
Ceased publication	12 January 1972 (1972-01-12) 11 July 1988 (1988-07-11)
Relaunched	5 December 1987 (1987-12-05)
City	Lviv
Country	Soviet Union (Ukrainian SSR)
Free online archives	museum.khpg.org/1127256682

The Ukrainian Herald (Ukrainian: Український вісник, romanized: Ukrainskyi visnyk) was an independent, self-published newspaper which was distributed clandestinely in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1970 to 1972, and later from 1987 to 1989. Led by Viacheslav Chornovil, it was the first independent newspaper in Ukrainian history.

History

The Ukrainian Herald began in January 1970 as a project by Ukrainian Soviet dissident leader Viacheslav Chornovil. Coming off the 1965–1966 Ukrainian purge, the Sixtier movement had been reconstituted into a more openly oppositional movement, which believed that the Soviet Union could not be improved through informing the government about human rights abuses, but needed to be confronted directly. Chornovil gathered a group of like-minded activists, including two fellow editors, Mykhailo Kosiv and Yaroslav Kendzior, and some of Ukraine's leading dissidents as writers.

The Ukrainian Herald published throughout Ukraine, reaching from its original publishing place in the western city of Lviv to the eastern Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk. Similarly to the Chronicle of Current Events in Moscow, The Ukrainian Herald reported on political repression and political prisoners. Additionally, however, it was involved in the publication of samvydav lacking the character of news, such as information about the Holodomor, literature, and history.

Other Ukrainian dissidents, such as Ivan Svitlychnyi, feared that the spread of The Ukrainian Herald would lead to increased persecution of the dissident movement. Vasyl Ovsienko, a dissident and human rights activist, recounted that a Soviet official later told Svitlychnyi "As long as you were not organised, we tolerated you. Therefore, when you have a magazine, we will not tolerate you." By mid-1971 the publication of The Ukrainian Herald had stopped in an effort to prevent the arrest of its members, but it proved to be too late: a massive crackdown on Ukrainian intelligentsia began in January 1972.

The Ukrainian Herald returned in 1987, amidst the glasnost policy of Mikhail Gorbachev and following Chornovil's 1985 return from exile in the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. According to Taras Chornovil, Viacheslav Chornovil's son and a Ukrainian politician, the editorial board met at Chornovil's home, where they received letters for individuals to submit material. The younger Chornovil claimed that the editorial board was overly-focused on publishing their own materials at the expense of other individuals, leading to a decrease in the newspaper's quality. The newspaper became part of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in January 1988, and ceased publication in 1989, when it became The Ukrainian Herald Express.

Legacy

The publication of The Ukrainian Herald marked a watershed event in the history of the Ukrainian press, leading journalist Vakhtang Kipiani to compare its impact on Ukraine to that of Pravda on the CPSU. A biographer of Chornovil, V. I. Matiash, argued that The Ukrainian Herald was the predecessor of Ukraine's modern-day independent press.